1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to table calculating devices which display a plurality of entries on a display unit and perform table calculation on the basis of data entered in the respective entries and more particularly, to a table calculating device which can freely set the position and shape of each of entries displayed on a display unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
In these years, there has been widely used an interactive data system which can handle various sorts of jobs on an interactive basis. The interactive data system, which is based on a personal computer, a workstation and so on, comprises a central processing unit for storing data and executing required processing, a display unit for displaying a processed result on its display screen, a keyboard or a mouse (pointing input device) for entering data or instructions necessary for data processing therethrough, a printer for providing a hard copy of the data as necessary, and an external memory for saving data therein. With such an interactive data system, when an operator or user enters a necessary command through the keyboard or mouse, a response to the entered command is immediately indicated on the screen of the display unit and the user enters a new command in response to the displayed response. Such procedure is repeated to obtain a desired processed result.
In one type of such a prior art interactive data system having a table calculating function, a plurality of entries are displayed as arranged in rows and columns on the screen of a display unit so that, when a user enters data in each of the entries, table calculation is carried out in accordance with a calculation equation previous set therein.
FIG. 5 shows an example of a table used for the table calculation. In this case, a table 51 consisting of 20 entries 50 marked off by column numbers "1" to "5" and row numbers "1" to "4" is displayed on the screen of the display unit and a user enters data such as characters, numeral values, etc. necessary for the table calculation in the entries. More specifically, in the case of such table calculation to find sales as the example of FIG. 5, the user enters article names, their unit prices and the quantity of such articles. This causes the sales amounts of the respective articles to be automatically calculated in accordance with a preset calculation equation (sales amount=unit price.times.quantity of articles) and then displayed in the respective sales amount fields.
Each time the unit price of each article or the quantity of articles is changed, the table calculation is again carried out with use of the latest data and therefore data and calculation results on which the table calculation is based can be always matched with each other.
Provided in the lower part of the table 51 on the display screen are an entry column/row number area 52 for showing the column and row numbers of an entry being currently selected through the mouse, an area 53 for showing data in the entry being now selected, and a command input area 54 for showing commands for changing the width and attribute of the entries in row and column directions, commands for copying, moving and deleting the entry and a command for changing the data in each entry or its calculation equation, to thereby allow the user to easily select and enter the necessary commands and data. When it is desired for the operator to enter desired data in one of the entries of the table, the operator specifies the target entry for data input through the cursor shift keys on the keyboard or through the operation of the mouse and then enters the desired data through the keyboard operation based on the editing command.
In this way, in the prior art table calculating device, any entry in the table is positioned and managed on the basis of its row and column numbers and the data display zone in the entry is uniquely determined by the preset row and column widths. In such a table as to have the structure mentioned above, when the table is arranged to have such a data array as to give priority to easy-to-see data, the data array structure is not matched with the regular entry matrix structure so that there occurs such an entry that no data is input at all; or conversely, when the table is arranged to have such a data array as to give priority to entry matrix structure, it becomes difficult to arrange data at its easy-to-see positions. In addition, the shade of the entries, which are inevitably set to be rectangular, is not always suitable for data entry because various sorts of data are entered in the entries.